Pervert pensioner jailed for sexual abusing young girls

A POLICE appeal for former employees of a Dunchurch haulage firm to come forward helped to break the story given by a pervert who had sexually abused a young girl there.

And at Warwick Crown Court pensioner Christopher Wilson was jailed for eight years for sexually abusing three young girls while he was living in Nuneaton in the 1970s.

During his trial the court heard that he had abused one of his victims at the Arthur Applins Transport premises in Dunchurch, and later raped a girl at his own garage in Tamworth.

Wilson, 72, of Wycliffe Way, Nuneaton, at the time, had denied a total of 21 charges of indecent assault and one of rape – but was found guilty of all 22 offences.

Jailing Wilson, who has recently been living at Auldgirth in Dumfries, Scotland, the judge, who also ordered him to register as a sex offender for life, said he had taken his victims’ childhoods away.

Prosecutor Rebecca Wade had told the jury that during the 70s Wilson had carried out a series of serious sexual assaults on three young girls.

“Those assaults largely remained a secret until last year when they came to the attention of the authorities when one of the women contacted the NSPCC, which led to a police investigation.”

Miss Wade pointed out that the charges were not the total of Wilson’s abuse of the girls, but were ‘merely a sample’ of the offences he had committed against them.

In the early 70’s Wilson was working as a mechanic at Arthur Applins Transport which was based just off the A45 at Dunchurch at the time, but now no longer exists.

On one occasion, possibly at a weekend when he was working alone, he took a ten-year-old girl there with him.

When she finally went to the police that victim described how she had been taken upstairs, where there was wooden furniture, and forced to commit sexual acts.

When he was finally arrested and questioned last year Wilson denied the incident ever took place, claiming the building was single storey and there was no upstairs.

Another girl said Wilson had sexually abused her in the sleeping compartment of one of the lorries at Applins.

Again, Wilson denied that had taken place, claiming the lorries had no sleeping compartments.

But after the police appealed, without revealing the reason, for former employees of Applins to contact them, Edgar Duckett, who had worked there as an HGV driver and was in a relationship with Arthur Applin’s daughter, came forward.

And he revealed that a second floor had been created in the single-storey unit by installing a false ceiling – and that there had been wooden furniture upstairs.

The police also spoke to other former employees and established that at least one lorry cab had a sleeping unit.

Miss Wade said after leaving Applins, Wilson had set up his own business, the ‘Dug-out Garage’ in Tamworth where in the mid-70’s he raped an 11-year-old girl in his office.

After the jury had found Wilson guilty of all 22 charges by a majority of 11 to one, Wilson’s barrister Kristina Montgomery conceded: “The sentence which will follow is inevitably one of a substantial term of imprisonment.”